TOPICS OF THE DAY.
ELECTION-PETITIONS: MR. ROEBUCK'S MOTION.
MR. ROEBUCK'S motion at once startled and cowed the House of Commons. Some of the honourable Members to whom he ad- dressed his preliminary questions expressed astonishment that he should be so superfluous as to expect that they would answer them. Member after Member protested on the first evening of the discussion, that it was "an extraordinary proceeding"—" a very extraordinary proceeding." No man, however, was bold enough to propose that this extraordinary motion should be directly negatived. "Sir ROBERT INGLIS says he would have done so had he been present; but Sir ROBERT, not having been tried on this occasion, may overrate his own courage. When the discussion was resumed, it appeared that Mr. WYNN, after a three-days' search, had been unable to discover any sufficient ground for rejecting the motion : so, after a little dust had been kicked up by Lord PALM ERSTON and Lord JOHN RUSSELL to cover the retreat of Sir JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE, and after Sir ROBERT PEEL had saved his dignity by suggesting some formal amendments, Mr. ROEBUCK obtained his Committee. For this victory he is indebted no less to tilt tone of high moral indignation with which he put down some poor enough attempts at persiflage than to the readiness and candour with which be received all really useful and practical suggestions.
The Standard observes, that in Monday's discussion the real question was lost sight of. "The real question was, the suggestion that bribery had been practised at Nottingham and the other places named ; but the question treated last night was, not the .question of bribery, but the question of compromise." The remark is just, as it regards the tenour of the debate ; but in a deliberate review of the subject, it ought not to be overlooked that the location included both the bribery and the compromise,—the former as a crime destructive of public morals and incompatible with good government, the latter as the means by which the per- petrators of that crime are secured from detection and punishment. An accusation of bribery is treated in the House of Commons as an accusation of seduction was treated in the court of CHARLES the Second : the Member believed to be guilty of it is not a whit the worse thought of by his colleagues. They must go through the forms of trying him, but they charitably allow him every facility in making good his defence—they "give him law," as they do their stags and foxes. The judges and the accused and the prosecutors understand each other : it is not a question of right or wrong they are discussing, but a trial of skill, in which two parties contend and the third sits umpire. The loser is pitied for his bad luck, or laughed at for his bungling ; and judges, accuser, and criminal, are ready to engage in similar nefarious transactions the moment the solemn farce is over. It is quite hopeless to think of reforming the bribed unless the bribers are to have stronger restraints imposed upon them at the same time. The examination into charges of bribery must be made real; honourable Members must be taught to feel that they are not engaged in a game at hazard, where they may lose or win money, but in answering to a serious accusation, in- volving shame and punishment. The question of compromise is as much the real question as that of bribery • for compromise implies a system of arrangements within the House, and for the convenience of Members of the House, to the disregard of the rights and interests of the public out of doors. The inquiry is levelled at a system through the medium of individual instances. The cases of Nottingham, Lewes, and other boroughs, are to be investigated in order to show what has been done in them and may consequently be done in others. If the reports founded on by Mr. ROEBUCK in regard to those cases are substan- tiated, tAe next question will be—what is there in the constitution of the tribunals appointed to try those cases to afford opportunities of playing such juggling tricks with success? What the result of this kind of inquiry, if conducted with average skill and met with average fairness, must be, scarcely admits of a doubt. It is not denied that compromises are frequent ; and this admission implies something wrong—a settlement of litigated questions, in which the public has the greatest interest, without the knowledge and consent of the public—a transaction implying a wish for secrecy, coupled with a request that the candid public will assume that there is nothing that needs concealment. The position taken up by the practisers of these suspicious arrangements is—" We do not deny that such things are done ; but it is your business to prove it, not ours to confess it." In strict law they are entitled to do this, but the suspicion attaching to such a line of defence is an encourage- ment to prosecute the inquiry. We know that the dirty thing is there ; the only question that remains is bow are we to get it out— how are we to draw the badger? One or two cases of guilty com- promise being established to satisfy the bribers of the House of Commons who "stand here for law,, the cause of the evil and the cure for it will admit of an easy demonstration. "He still maintained the opinion," said Lord Jona RUSSELL, "that the consequence of the Grenville Act, and of other acts of the same kind subsequently adopted, was to induce the possession of seats in Parliament to be regarded as a question of property. Individuals who in the first instance expended large sums of money on an election were after- wards compelled to incur further expenditure in the prosecution of petitions, or in defending themselves against petitions; and it un- avoidably followed, that persons so circumstanced looked to their own interests, and that the interests of the public, which might de- mead investigation and inquiry, were disregarded." This is true : the 'whole ten= of the argument of Lercl hues colleague, the late Secretary for Foreign Affairs, was an unconscious illustration of the - doctrine : it was an expanded version of "May not a man do what , be likes with his own ?" or "You rascals, I bought you, and so I'll sell you." And the fact of this being the habitual state of mind of , the House of Commons points at once to the only remedy. A set , of men who agree in asserting that they hold as property what they hold only in trust are not safe judges in each other's cases. They have a common interest in preventing inquiry being pushed so far on any occasion as to show in one instance the defect which affects all their titles : they are necessarily a partial and corrupt tribunal. The only effectual remedy is to transfer the jurisdiction in such cases to another judge. Subordinate remedies will be necessary for the purpose of accelerating decisions or diminishing expense : a public prosecutor for following up accusations of this kind may be ad- visable: but the sine qua non is a permanent and independent tri- bunal. The power of trying election-petitions must be relinquished by the House of Commons—the business of which is to legislate for the whole, not to decide in individual cases—and transferred to the existing Courts at Westminster, or to some permanent judge appointed for the express purpose of trying questions of disputed elections. It is to be desired that Sir ROBERT Istoms may for once prove a true prophet : the Member for Oxford wound up the dis- cussion by predicting "that this inquiry, if successful, would be the death-blow of the whole system which had grown up under the several acts brought respectively in by the right honourable Baronet at the head of the Government, by the right honourable Member for Merionethshire, (Mr. Wynn,) and by the late Mr. Grenville."
Previous page
